[KLUG Members] can't apt-get remove phpwiki

[Richard Harding]

Thanks for the help. What a mess. I found a bug report on the debian site
where someone mentioned removing the apache-ssl and apache-perl requirements
from the phpwiki.postrm and that worked great for me. 

Rick 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jamie McCarthy [mailto:jamie at mccarthy.vg] 
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 10:20 AM
To: The main KLUG mailing list.
Subject: Re: [KLUG Members] can't apt-get remove phpwiki

rick at ricksweb.info (Richard Harding) writes:

> Now I can't install apache-perl because of dependency problems and 
> phpwiki installed without it just fine so I am really confused why it 
> won't get out of my system without this error.

Huh.  Not sure, I haven't seen this before.  Possibly phpwiki required a
package which was automatically installed, which conflicts with apache-perl
(maybe an older version?).  Or, based on the error you described, maybe the
phpwiki package has screwed up its dependencies somehow, related to
apache-perl.

> Any ideas how I can remove this thing from the system?

There are a few ways.  The error you describe:

> > invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/apache-perl not found.
> > dpkg: error processing phpwiki (--remove):
> >  subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 100

sounds like the package is misconfigured, trying to run an initscript that
isn't there.  My first guesses as to why that would happend are (1) you
manually deleted it, or (2) the package requires another package but didn't
list it as a dependency.

My guess is number two, that phpwiki really does require the apache-perl
package, but didn't list it as a dependency.  Somehow it managed to install
anyway.  And now when you try to uninstall, it's trying to run
'/etc/init.d/apache-perl stop' so it can do a clean shutdown before removing
itself, but since you haven't installed apache-perl, that fails.

The first thing I'd try is 'apt-get -f install' and see if that fixes
anything;  if so, try the remove again, maybe it'll work, who knows.

Assuming that doesn't work, I might try fooling the remove script in a small
way, to get it to continue.  You do have _some_ kind of Apache running, I
assume;  shut it down manually first, and then add in a phony script at
/etc/init.d/apache-perl that does nothing.
Maybe 'ln -s /bin/true /etc/init.d/apache-perl'?  Or maybe symlink your real
apache shutdown script to that filename?  Then try running the apt-get
remove again, see if it runs cleanly.

Sadly, Apache is a bit of a mess, and it's probably the hardest application
to manage with any package management system. 
Especially for those of us who want to mess around with different
technologies that all require their own modules in the webserver. 
It's the one app that I don't let Debian install;  I wrote a script to
install my custom-built Apache into /usr/local/apache from tarballs.  I
guess it's the price to pay for what is really a very flexible, powerful and
fast server.
--
  Jamie McCarthy
 http://mccarthy.vg/
  jamie at mccarthy.vg

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